10 Traps NOT to fall into when designing your own Logo

Your logo is the face of your business when you can’t be there, for instance on a poster or web banner, and as such it has to do a very important job.
Many small business owners, who simply can’t afford professional design services, opt for ten-a-penny web generated clone logos. These have the advantage of being cheap but look generic and are likely to be logos for hundreds of your direct competitors as well.

Your Business is worth MORE than that!

At Be Your Own Graphic Designer, we believe in helping small businesses to take control of their own graphic design and on and off line branding with professional advice and training in vector graphics and up to the minute marketing techniques – specifically written with the small UK business in mind.

As professionals in the design business, we would like to share with you the top 10 traps people fall into when designing logos – so you won’t have to find out the hard way…

1. Avoid using clip art or off the peg designs

Your logo needs to be unique – do you really want to look like a thousand other businesses?
Buying an ‘off the peg’ logo means you have no control over varying it, re-sizing it or making it your own…
You owe it to your future self to do better than that!

2. Don’t be a copy cat

Research is fine, but please don’t copy another company’s logo. Apart from being illegal, you might find you have to re-brand your whole company later on or even get sued – it’s really not worth the risk.

Always be original.

3. Don’t go crazy with colour

Most great logos contain only a few carefully chosen colours
– see the BYOGD colour theory for small businesses chart to help you with this.

4. Be careful of using overly fancy typefaces

They can be very difficult to read.

5. Never use more than one serif typeface in any logo

6. If in doubt – Leave it out!

If you are unsure about an element in your design ask yourself if you really need it at all?
Keep It Stylishly Simple every time.

7. Don’t try to be too clever

Your logo should be simple and straight forward – The best logos are the simple ones.

8. Don’t be unintentionally rude!

Be very careful to read your words carefully, including your www.address and look at your logo from all angles.
Unintentional faux pas include: www.weightwatchers.com (last letter of weight and first three letters of watchers), and some unfortunate logo designs.

9. Don’t think you have to spend a fortune to get a good logo design

Kim and I are specialists, training UK small businesses to do THEIR OWN graphic design and on and off line marketing, with on line videos, downloads, templates AND professional advice and support.

We train on Inkscape software which is 100% Free to download into your Windows PC, laptop or Mac and our complete courses, containing over 40 tutorials, videos, infographics and templates are available for just £29.95 for each complete course. Choose from Inkscape for Beginners and Inkscape for Business to see how we can save you time and money as you build your brand.

10. Don’t forget your customers

Remember that your logo’s job it to appeal to YOUR target market and to represent YOU and YOUR company’s values in your absence.

For your business to succeed, you need to develop a UNIQUE logo with strong branding and a solid on and off line marketing strategy that works hard for YOU and appeals to YOUR TARGET MARKET.

There are plenty of agencies who you can pay to do these jobs for you, and for bigger businesses this is often cost effective, but if you are a small business you need to be able to TAKE CONTROL of your brand, REACT QUICKLY to competitors’ promotions and SAVE TIME and MONEY by being able to do what you want when you want…

There will always those who will criticise and suggest improvements, but at the end of the day, who knows your customers better than you?